Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Well this will be a short one since I'm recovering from choking during an audition and getting my acting butt kicked! Lol--what, you didn't think I was actually choked and beat up, did you? Awww--you did! Well I appreciate the sentiment. Really I do! In reality, I auditioned at SJREP (Yeah, my place of work!) and unfortunately I fell short.

When I got back to my desk to resume the daily work, I mentally reassessed what happened. I wasn't prepared! Yes, I know...I can see some of you trying to hand me your copy of Stanislavski's "An Actor Prepares". I'll generously wave that down, as I have a copy of it myself. I planned on going tomorrow but instead I was convince by the lovely equity audition moderator to go ahead and swing in today. In retrospect, I should have waited.

I was 3/4 through my monologue when suddenly...BLANK--my throat felt constricted, my palms started to sweat up (believe it or not, I was pretty calm walking in there) and the hairs on my back stood on ends. How could this be?! I've recited/experienced this monologue many times over the past few weeks. Then I realized the key ingredient. This was the FIRST time I've ever performed it to anyone. Oi vey.

If I feel I absolutely must dwell on a poor performance at an audition, I'm in the habit of only allowing myself five to ten minutes, tops. In this case, it rested on my head, chest, abdomen, thighs--gah, everywhere, for a solid two hours. The fact that I work here and that I see and hold conversations with Bruce, our casting director must have confused the butterflies in my stomach to, instead of perform aerial ballet, kamakazi into my stomach lining. It felt weird! To say the least.

The two hours are up, it's time to move on and knock another down for experience, even if it was a smidgen bit embarrassing.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I missed Cinequest entirely last year and that was probably because I wasn't feeling like I was in the right place, physically and mentally. This year, however, I've treated myself to indulging in all sorts of short and feature films and an incredibly touching and tear jerking documentary called, "Dear Zachery". But I'm getting ahead of myself. I plan on blogging my Cinequest experience at a later time when the entire event wraps up.

In the meantime, rehearsals for Pandemonium is creeping up and I'm excited in every way! It gets lonely and boring coming home from work and even though I'm quite passionate about the work I do at the Rep (Box Office Customer Service), I'm aching to be part of something closer the stage (or around a camera). The San Jose Repertory Theatre general auditions are coming up so preparing for that specifically will take up some of my time quite nicely.

There's not much to report outside of theatre life except that I am the proud owner of a small tub of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia icecream. I'm sure somewhere out there is another person with an identical tub of the same flavor BUT I can guarantee you that I'll have cherry and chocolate chips in different locations from theirs. Thus, mine is unique. And in the same sense, so is theirs. Oh no! I'm...I'm.....AHHHHH!!! Must....have....cherr....gar.....cream!